This blog exists purely as a place for me to dump random links and thoughts I have rather than emailing them to my friends. It'll have large amounts of inside jokes. Also there will probably be times when I write "you" or refer to an email. Just pretend that you are reading an email to you. If you don't know me you likely won't find anything here interesting. If you do know me you also will not find anything here interesting.

Zero-width characters are invisible, ‘non-printing’ characters that are not displayed by the majority of applications. F​or exam​ple, I’ve ins​erted 10 ze​ro-width spa​ces in​to thi​s sentence, c​an you tel​​l? (Hint: paste the sentence into Diff Checker to see the locations of the characters!). These characters can be used to ‘fingerprint’ text for certain users.

Sunday, November 4, 2018

Last August, I traveled to Yosemite National Park to meet up with Shott’s colleague, ISB special agent Jeff Sullivan, an affable, self-deprecating, 35-year veteran of the Park Service. Sullivan has played a role in investigating nearly every major crime and mystery that’s taken place in Yosemite over the past quarter-century, which made him the ideal guide for a tour of the shadowy side of America’s fifth most visited national park. See that grassy expanse, dotted with wildflowers? That’s where park visitors discovered the skull of a still-unidentified young woman, a murder claimed by the prolific serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. That lush meadow? Once, someone found a dead bear there, its head neatly severed from its body. (The ISB sent the bear’s remains to the park’s wildlife lab in Oregon, hoping to discover clues about who’d poached it. The lab called back a few weeks later: The poacher you’re looking for is a mountain lion.)

Sullivan and I drove up to Glacier Point, where he told me about the rockslide in 1996 that killed one and injured at least 11. The dust cloud it kicked up was so massive it blocked out the sun; until Sullivan arrived on the scene, he’d been sure there would be dozens of casualties. Next to us, a bored teenager flung a water bottle into the abyss. Watching it fall seemed to cause Sullivan physical pain. He leaned in close and flashed his badge at the kid. “Don’t throw water bottles,” he said quietly.